Day 2 RootsTech – Vendors, Visits and MyHeritage is Smokin’ Hot

Posted on March 2, 2018 by Roberta Estes

This morning view just doesn’t get old!

Across the rooftop, you can see two churches in front of the mountain.

Day 2 was jam packed, and that’s without attending any sessions. I did hear through the RootsTech grapevine that some of the afternoon sessions did have a few seats available. Of course, you would need to select the right sessions.

There’s a lot of very unhappy rumbling here about the conference: lines, full sessions, lack of signage, etc.

I spent the day doing four things:

Visiting vendor booths
Talking to people
MyHeritage Lunch
Vendor appointments

Let’s take a look at each of the four.

Visiting Booths

There are probably hundreds of booths. Some quite large, of course, like FamilySearch (show sponsor), Ancestry and the other big players, to Mom and Pop shops.

I managed to visit maybe half of the booths today. I’ll try for the other half tomorrow. I am going to make myself absent for part of the day to visit the Family History Library.

I noticed a LOT of vendors offering products to digitize and catalog your photos. Others encouraged recording memories and of course, given that we’re in Salt Lake, there was lots of focus on the Mormon faith and many obviously local vendors.

In addition to the sessions, there was a vendor demo area in the rear of the hall. I wandered past a couple of times, but the two vendors I saw didn’t really catch my eye.

At the Legacy Tree Genealogists booth, I found Jessica Taylor (at left, beside me), Paul Woodbury and Amber Brown (far right). (I apologize for not getting the lady’s name at the far left.) Jessica is the owner and founder of Legacy Tree Genealogists, Paul Woodbury is the amazing genetic genealogist that specializes in adoptee and missing parent family reconstruction and Amber Brown is their marketing representative. They were kind enough to give me with a RootsTech survival basket. I’ve never been to a conference before where you needed one of these, and by the end of the day, I was extremely grateful.

A really big thank you Jessica and crew!

Next, I ran into my old friend, Peter Roberts, at the conference as a volunteer for WikiTree, a free site for you to upload your family tree and collaborate with other genealogists. I’ve known Peter for years from the Family Tree DNA annual conference where he is the project administrator for the Bahamas DNA Project.

Peter took the time to sit down with me and explain some of the new DNA features at WikiTree that include Y DNA, mitochondrial, autosomal and most recently, the ability to link your WikiTree tree to your DNAPainter profile. WikiTree utilizes various types of DNA information to support or disprove ancestral connections.

Peter and I also discussed that putting information like links to any articles or blog posting you have written about your ancestors into the description area about each ancestor would be a great idea! I was thinking about the 52 Ancestors series, of course.

I briefly met Chris Whitten, founder of WikiTree, but I wasn’t quick enough to grab a photo.

Speaking of DNAPainter, Jony Pearl, from England, won the Innovation Showcase with DNAPainter. I’ve been using this extremely useful tool for about a month now, and I have an article half written. I’ll be finishing it as soon as I get home. You’re going to love this tool!

Congratulations Jony! Well deserved.

This conference has lots of beginners. FamilySearch had a very large area called the Discovery Zone. Just walking past, I did notice people entirely engrossed and making discoveries.

One of the Discovery Zone areas encouraged you to take your photo, or a group photo, with a backdrop of your choice.

I couldn’t resist. Plus, it’s free and the results are messaged to your phone immediately.

I was amazed to find this backdrop, given that I have actually stood in exactly this place in Germany – in real life. In fact, I can tell you there are two lovely lace shops just past that clock tower arch, one on either side of the street, and a quilt shop just beyond. In fact it was right here that the quilt shop-owner’s husband came riding up on his bicycle to deliver our purchases at the end of the day.

A few minutes later, I came across MYndVault, a digital cloud storage solution that includes servers stores in the granite mountain.

To prove his point, the founder of MYndVault was giving little boxes of granite – well, chocolate that looked like granite anyway. The chocolate was great – and everyone needs to think about this type of “inheritance issue.” It’s not just cloud storage, but an electronic directive that lists your personal representative, things like social media accounts and passwords. Obviously, I suggested that he add a specific field for DNA results at vendors, but there is already ample room to include this in non-specific fields.

There were lots of “charts” vendors in attendance, but I particularly liked this one from BranchesArt.

I’ve been wanting to meet Lara Diamond, who blogs at Lara’s Jewnealogy. Lara is Jewish and specializes in endogamous DNA and the inherent frustrations therein.

The lovely thing about meeting in person is that you actually get to talk to the individual. Lara tested with 23andMe initially and it was that test (before the FDA restricted the information they could provide to consumers) that led her to discover she had both a mutation for cancer, and cancer itself. Take a minute and read Lara’s story here. DNA testing very literally saved her life!

Lara will be writing about a super-cool record find soon that defies all logic. Right, Lara, right???

Next was the MyHeritage lunch, where I was thrilled to meet Randy Seaver, finally, in person.

My joke is that I wake up each morning to Randy, because that’s when I read his blog, Genea-Musings, every day. Randy writes more quality content than any other blogger I know. In fact, he has a great compendium of RootsTech conference articles that you can check out on his blog yesterday and today.

The MyHeritage luncheon speaker was Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage.

Gilad and I had a personal meeting later in the day, and he gave me permission to share the slides from the luncheon with my readers.

I must say, MyHeritage is making very big waves in the genealogy community.

For a company that just started DNA testing about 18 months ago, and had significant startup challenges with matching, they’ve come a very, very long way.

First, Gilad announced a new initiative to test 15,000 adoptees or those seeking unknown parents by donating free kits. You can read more about this program here or apply to receive a kit. Those with financial need will receive priority.

Second, they also announced Family Search Tree sync between Family Search and MyHeritage that allows collaborative syncing of trees between LDS members and MyHeritage.

Third, they announced the publication of a paper culminating from 7 years of research, published today, discussing 86 million family trees from Geni and the patterns that emerge from this much data about migration and families. For example, exceptional genetics only adds abut 5 years to life expectancy, but poor lifestyle habits can deduct 10.

They are on a tear, I’m telling you. They weren’t done yet.

Fourth, they announced that they are adding new records at an amazing pace. Three new collections, including the digitization and indexing of high school yearbooks from the US.

Fifth – new advancements in genetic genealogy.

MyHeritage has observed that many people don’t understand the details of genetic genealogy or how to use the tools. Additionally, many people don’t have or create family trees.

MyHeritage has created what they call “The Big Tree” where all of their customers are connected in one large “tree of humanity,” or at least as much of humanity as has tested or uploaded to MyHeritage. They then look at how your own node is connected to others in that large tree and distill the results into something useful for you.

The next step, Gilad calls the “Theory of Family Relativity,” where MyHeritage combines your DNA matches, their trees and documents from their collection to construct a theoretical tree between you and your matches.

The connection may need to go up and down other people’s trees a couple of times, and may be discovered in the tree of someone you both match.

In summary, “The Theory of Family Relativity” will provide a paper trail theory for how you match your DNA matches. That theory will be for you to confirm or disprove. Gilad says that it’s easier with a tree, but can be accomplished at some level even without one AND it will be released before year end 2018.

Sixth, a new triangulated chromosome browser that compared up to 7 people simultaneously.

Downloads are being added as well.

MyHeritage is focusing a marketing drive in Europe. Their market research revealed that in Germany (I think,) only 22% of the population had even heard of DNA testing. Their goal is to infiltrate that market space.

France Gilad…focus on France😊

Gilad has christened 2018 “The Year of the Segment.”

And as if that wasn’t enough, Gilad added even MORE items.

Paper trail theories and connections to explain DNA matches.
Theories genetically of how your matches connect to you.
Clustering of triangulated segments.
Automatic chromosome painting.
Identification and recreation of ancestors through the testing of multiple descendants by creating an “ancestral segment bank,” of sorts.
Resurrecting the DNA of dead ancestors which would be made into a kit for matching. For example, your grandfather.
Automatic tree building.

If you’re sitting there with your mouth hanging open in shock…well, so was I. This is what I’ve talked about for years, now coming to fruition.

Gilad credits these strides to a combination of vision, applied technology and very smart people!

All of these development items are either in beta or past proof of concept. Some are available now, some shortly, the “Tree of Family Relativity” by the end of 2018.

Truthfully, I don’t even know what to say after that massive announcement, except transfer your DNA results to MyHeritage. If you ever had doubt, it’s gone now.

Finishing Up

In the Innovation Showcase competition, obviously DNAPainter won first place, but the rest of the entrants also deserve recognition. Rootsfinder and ItRunsInMyFamily took second and third. You may want to go and take a look for yourself.

MatchCompare https://sortingdnacousins.blogspot.ca/
Gno-mine http://gno-mine.com/
ItRunsInMyFamily http://www.itrunsinmyfamily.com/
Origins (Lillian and David Mann) http://www.heirloomsoftware.com/origins/
RootsFinder (Dallan Quass) http://www.rootsfinder.com/

I have not had a chance to review these myself, so you’ll have to let me know what you think.

Apparently LivingDNA made an announcement as well. Many vendors make private appointments with bloggers, movers and shakers at RootsTech. In the past few days I’ve been fortunate enough to have private meetings with Ancestry, Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage. Living DNA is not on that list. I did stop by their booth today, but the right people weren’t there.

We’ve known for some time that matching was to be released in 2018, but we didn’t know that LivingDNA planned to reconstruct trees from genetic data alone, with no trees or other information involved.

You can read the announcement for yourself here.

I don’t anticipate that I’ll have the opportunity to meet with a Living DNA representative to garner additional information, unfortunately.

I would be more comfortable with this goal if they had matching experience at all. MyHeritage, with their early out-the-door matching issues is proof of how difficult it can be to get matching right.

I also feel matching and tree reconstruction will be much more accurate with a blend of trees, documents and DNA.

However, Living DNA is giving it a shot, and everyone has to start someplace. I will be very interested in what their new product will look like and how well it will work.

On the way out the door this evening, I noticed a bunch of teenagers who had obviously been to the conference, having fun.

Various vendors give away ribbons to attach to the bottom of your badge.

These kids had obviously been very busy. I enjoy seeing young people having good clean fun, and especially if those young people are the future of genealogy!

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Disclosure

I receive a small contribution when you click on some of the links to vendors in my articles. This does NOT increase the price you pay but helps me to keep the lights on and this informational blog free for everyone. Please click on the links in the articles or to the vendors below if you are purchasing products or DNA testing.

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Services

Genealogy Research

Legacy Tree Genealogists for genealogy research

RootsTech Meetup and Super-Cool DNA Finds!

Posted on March 1, 2018 by Roberta Estes

The Expo hall opened promptly at 6 this evening and remained open for 2 hours. It was a lightning fast 2 hours, let me tell you!

First, on my way to find a restroom, instead I found a VERY COOL vendor, GeneaCreations.

Bet you can’t guess what she had in her booth!

And this is just the beginning!

There are earrings to match the double helix necklace too!

But, the best is yet to come.

Jeannette, the artist, is holding up my new t-shirt. What you can’t really tell is that the decoration is actually rhinestones. Yea, I’m a Rhinestone Genetic Genealogist!

She carries a couple of other DNA items, including denim shirts for men, and I’m going back tomorrow for those.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, she does accept customer orders.

Meetup

I needed to be back at the Family Tree DNA booth by 6:30 for the meetup with my wonderful blog followers. Thanks so much to all of you who came by to introduce yourselves and say hello.

It’s so nice to talk to other genealogists who are loving genetic genealogy. The gentleman at left has been doing genealogy more than 40 years. The man at right hosts a DNA special interest group.

I’m sorry, I’m really awful with names.

Richard Weiss at left, and Rob Warthen at right, www.dnaadoption.com. I refer people to DNAadoption every single day, for search angels, for education and for tools. It was wonderful to meet these find folks in person, after all these years.

Janet Seegmiller and I met years ago on the Cumberland Gap group. Our ancestors were from some of the same places, and we’ve been on parallel journeys every since. I feel like I’ve known Janet forever! It was so wonderful to actually get to put a face with a name and many, many e-mails.

A group had a Q&A session. We were folks still remaining at closing time, when they dimmed the lights, telling us we’d had enough fun.

Jim Brewster with Family Tree DNA represents my Brewster line. Yes, that’s Brewster as in William Brewster, the Pilgrim who arrived on the Mayflower. I did notice that the Mayflower Association booth is nearby. I think I’ll have to go by and let them know I’ve applied for membership.

I wasn’t able to take photos of everyone who came by, including a cousins I had wanted to meet for years. I apologize to anyone I didn’t get to say hello to personally.

I’ll close this article by showing a really unique guest. Ever wonder what a family tree really looks like?

This tree even came complete with a few birds. I wonder if those would be looney birds! Every tree has them, you know!

You know, I just couldn’t resist the temptation of seeing what would happen if you pulled on one of those shaky leaves.

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Disclosure

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Services

Genealogy Research

Legacy Tree Genealogists for genealogy research

RootsTech – Ummm, Math is Your Friend

Posted on March 1, 2018 by Roberta Estes

Wow, has this ever been a learning experience. And it’s only Day 1 of this great adventure!

Since y’all are coming with me, I’m going to share from the beginning.

This is my first time at RootsTech, so I’m walking through the experience from start to finish. Yesterday was Day 0 and today is Day 1.

Before leaving Michigan, I took a “prayer walk” around the labyrinth in the yard, grateful for the lovely flying weather. Retrospectively, I’m so glad I took these few minutes, because later, I would need every ounce of patience I could muster.

Yesterday, I spent the day in the airport and in the air.

Yes, I bought the cool double helix t-shirt from DNAGeeks, because I am one😊

I arrived in Salt Lake City at night. The Marriott Salt Lake Downtown at City Creek, across from the conference center, where I’m staying is a short taxi ride from the airport, $25. Other hotels provide shuttle service, but the Marriott does not.

The driver was very nice and informative and I actually enjoyed the ride. There is abundant transportation in baggage claim.

I was excited to wake up in Salt Lake City, this morning.

The first thing I saw on my phone was this:

I subscribe to “This Day in History,” and you might be interested too. It’s free and often gives me perspective about my ancestors’ lives.

How appropriate when I’m destined to see awesome genetic genealogy presentations today.

Salt Lake City is truly beautiful. Looking out my hotel room, I can see the conference center across the street and the beautiful mountains in the background. Since I arrived in the dark, this was a truly beautiful surprise! A visual delight.

Thankfully, there’s a Starbucks in the hotel lobby, and the conference center is across the street. And there’s no new snow. Let’s hope that holds all week!

Interesting signs outside the conference center. Wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. I think it’s art.

Early conference registration opened yesterday, allowing attendees to pick up their badges early “to avoid the long lines” today. I couldn’t do that because of the flight schedule, so I hoped that the lines wouldn’t be too awful this morning. Boy, was I wrong.

I talked to people in the elevator that waited two and a half hours in line yesterday. Yes, that’s not a typo.

This conference has a paid registration of over 14,000 participants.

Inside the conference center, I quickly discovered that the line is so long that you literally, and I do mean quite literally, cannot see the beginning/end.

Now for that gratitude list. Because Family Tree DNA is hosting my meet-up this evening, they added me to their list of people with access to their booth. Therefore, my registration pickup did not require the two and a half hour wait that other people endured.

I almost feel guilty, and I had absolutely no idea how lucky I was.

I physically could not have stood for 2.5 hours in line with the knee/broken femur issue from the fall last summer. Walking I can do, but 2.5 hours standing is excessive.

Ok, what else is there to see?

The vendor area in the Expo Hall won’t be open until this evening, beginning at 6.

Here’s a sneak preview during setup.

After I retrieved my registration, I proceeded to find Ballroom E for Diahan Southerd and Louise Cooke’s talk about “A DNA Match with No Tree? No Problem,” except I discovered that the session room had been full since 9AM, more than half an hour before the session started.

Thankfully there are MANY very friendly volunteers who are wearing teal t-shirts shirts and have infinite patience with confused and frustrated conference attendees. Bless those people!

I asked a volunteer if any of the Ballroom sessions had any available seats, and guess what – they were all full.

Now, this is really disappointing, especially since I had carefully mapped out in advance through the conference app the sessions I wanted to attend. In fact, the hallway was full of people who wanted to attend sessions, any of these sessions, but couldn’t.

Speaking of super-friendly volunteers, meet Josh Hall. He works for Family Search, and he’s one of the people coordinating the legions of volunteers. I spoke with him for a few minutes, and he had a great story. See his missing tooth? He said, “When a 2 year old wants a cookie, give it to them.”

I laughed out loud, a much needed reprieve from frustration. Then he told me that he really ran into another kid on the playground years ago, but the 2 year old story is much better. His tooth is going to be replaced shortly, but then he won’t have this great story to tell!

Aside from being super friendly, Josh was genuinely interested in suggestions to help people eliminate the confusion factor and to improve the conference experience.

I suggested that mailing the registrations and bags to attendees, in advance of the conference, even if they had to charge a $10 shipping fee would be well worth eliminating the two and a half hour lines. That would also facilitate attendees being able to attend the early sessions, which started before most people could get through the conference registration line.

However, given that the sessions were full, it wouldn’t have mattered if they got through the registration line – they STILL wouldn’t have had access to the sessions. RootsTech needs to do a better job of sizing the facility/conference to the number of attendees.

Additionally, some “you are here” types of signs at entrance doors would be really useful.

After Josh and I finished our conversation, I spent some time trying to familiarize myself with this massive facility. I wanted to scope out where the restrooms and other classrooms were for later classes.

The facility has a nice area on the second floor for people to sit with computers and such.

BTW, I love this architecture!

The second class I wanted to attend, given by Ancestry titled “Behind Your DNA Results” started at 11 in one of the second floor classrooms. I arrived about 10:30, thinking I could go inside the room as soon as the people from the earlier session left.

I was about to receive the shock of my life, because the line for this session was ALREADY down the entire length of the hallway. Literally hundreds of people who were never going to fit into that room

This is about half way down the line and it literally reached to the end of the hallway.

I felt really sorry for these people, because they were doing to stand in this long line only to discover that they weren’t going to get into the session they wanted and the rest of the rooms were full too.

How the heck is this happening?

First, DNA is a VERY popular subject. But that’s not all.

Let’s Do Some Math

Two sessions were held this morning. The first session slot offered a total of 17 different sessions you could select from, and the second offered 20.

Let’s say that only 10,000 (of the 14,000 total) people are here today. 10,000 people divided by 17 sessions means that the sessions have 588 people each. Even if only 5000 are here today, that’s still 294 people per session. If 14,000 people are here, that’s 823 people per session and there is no way these rooms are set up to handle anyplace near this kind of capacity.

This means that many of the people who not only spent the money to register, but to travel here and stay in hotels on average of $150 per night aren’t going to be able to attend the sessions they are paying so dearly to attend. For me, this amounts to over $2000 already.

If you physically can’t stand in long lines for extended periods, you’re not going to be able to attend ANY of the sessions, because the lines for the next session are beginning long before the previous sessions is over. Obviously, if you need to be in line for the next session, you can’t be in a previous one, unless you can somehow clone yourself.

To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.

Regroup

Ok, I’m here and clearly not going to be able to attend sessions, so what am I going to do to make lemonade out of this one?

I went to Starbucks to get a coffee and think. I got some chocolate too!

I’m meeting people, friends old and new.

This morning, I briefly met Thomas MacEntee of GeneaBloggers fame.

I didn’t grab his picture, but hope to see him again. We’re both old-timers in this field and have never met before in person.

I ran into Janine Cloud and the Family Tree DNA crew in the hotel lobby and got to spend some time with them talking. It’s so incredibly hectic at the FTDNA conference that I never actually get a chance to talk to these people, so this was a nice treat for a few minutes.

We grabbed a sandwich in the coffee shop and had a picnic in the hotel lobby.

Hey, sometimes fun is where you make it.

I ran into Bob McLaren, long time administrator of the McLaren DNA Project. It was SO MUCH FUN to see Bob again. We’ve been doing genetic genealogy together for 18 years and also share a technology interest as well.

Bob is almost always dressed in his McLaren kilt at these types of function. I told him I love his purse. He told me this is a sporran. I have sporran envy and want one!

It’s exciting to see old friends.

I’m looking forward to the meetup this evening at 6:30.

I can’t wait to meet you this evening in the Family Tree DNA booth. I’ll be there for sure at 6:30 and perhaps earlier, so come by. I’m probably not going to attempt to go to the general session at 4 due to the obvious space issues.

I’m going to spend more time in the Expo Hall with vendors.

Since going to sessions isn’t a viable option, I’m going to visit lots of vendors and take photos for you. I will also be reporting on show specials for DNA products. Right now, I know that both MyHeritage and FTDNA will be having specials of some sort, and I’m sure other vendors will be too.

I do have some appointments with vendors to discuss products and new features, and I’ll be sharing those discoveries with you. Shows like this are great for seeing all the vendors under one roof and talking to the employees.

I’m going to the Family History Library, and you’re coming along with me

One needs a research plan to visit the FHL and get the most out of the records, and I don’t have a plan in advance, BUT, I will construct one as best I can on the fly. As a genealogist, who among us doesn’t have a line or two that needs research.

Summary

Ok, I’ve had to regroup. Here are some of the take-aways from day 1.

If you can’t physically stand in long lines, arrange for a scooter or don’t attend this conference. Josh said that RootsTech is genuinely interested in reducing the confusion and making the conference easier, and I sincerely hope that he is right and that they succeed. I’m not angry, just extremely disappointed.
People are incredibly friendly here and helpful.
The meetup tonight is going to be awesome.
Seeing friends and making new acquaintances is sometimes the best part of…well…anything.
The vendors’ booths are going to be really interesting! I’m going to learn something new, for sure.
You can construct a research plan on the fly if you have to.
Can’t wait to visit the FHL – kind of like Mecca for genealogists.

I’m going to make lemonade and I’m going to have a great time no matter what!!!

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Disclosure

Thank you so much.

DNA Purchases and Free Transfers

Genealogy Services

Genealogy Research

Legacy Tree Genealogists for genealogy research

RootsTech, Here I Come!!

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Roberta Estes

Yes, it’s true.

Nothing like last minute decisions. Truthfully, RootsTech was an on-again off-again proposition for me, until a close friend told me that she won’t be needing her hotel room next door to the conference center. Now, her reservation is mine and my husband is booking flights.

It’s off to the race!

I’ve never attended RootsTech before. I’m not particularly fond of large conferences or large crowds, so RootsTech has never been a draw for me. Furthermore, I like the ancestor catch far more than the chase. For me, the chase is just a necessity and I don’t particularly enjoy that part.

I know you’re probably all laughing at me, because I do so much chasing. C’est la vie!

However, DNA changed all of that for me. I LOVE the DNA part of the chase. It speaks to the pushing-the-frontier-of-science nerdy part of my soul. I think I received the frontier-pushing gene from my ancestors.

DNA is such an incredibly personal thing to inherit. I can track pieces of it far back in time to ancestors I never knew and certainly don’t possess anything tangible that came from them – except for their DNA.

Not only that, but the same DNA is sharable, and shared, with many cousins who descended from those same ancestors. Pieces of my flesh and blood who lived and loved so long ago connecting those of us who live today. Meeting those myriad cousins, because of and through the DNA gifted to us by those very same ancestors – pure bliss!

Seriously, until the past few years, who could say they were introduced by their ancestors who were born in the 1600s or 1700s or even earlier with Y and mitochondrial DNA testing? DNA testing does that today.

Every. Single. Day.

As DNA testing has progressed, so have the vendors, tools and products that leverage our discoveries.

So, yes, the lure of genetics, genealogy and technology, all in one place is what has finally propelled me to RootsTech.

Are you attending? I’d love to meet you. Please, please find me, say howdy and introduce yourself. If we’re cousins, let me know. You can NEVER have too many cousins!

Here’s my picture, taken at the Dublin GGI Conference. At RootsTech, I’ll be wearing some piece of DNA clothing every day. And yes, I DO have enough DNA clothes to wear something different every day of the conference!

You can also recognize me by my signature “wisdom blonde” hair or maybe my special DNA bag. I can’t wait to meet you.